Hey You, Let's Play Zoo!

Friday was a cool day. Literally it was cooler actually. jejeje. Classes were for the most part uneventful as I made my way through Nihongo and Japanese Business. The readings for that class were of particular interest because they tended to focus on Toyota which is where I am going to visit next week on Wednesday. Lunch was had with a couple friends from Nanzan that I have made over the past few weeks: Yuka, Yuho, Sayako, Satomi, and Regina. We had a fun little time on the green in front of CJS before we all had to head out to get out classes on. It really was too short of a time to do anything really because I showed up late in the first place (nice). Apologies.
Afterwards we (Dylan, Regina, Adam, Mallory, Brittany, Guy, & I) went to see the second most famous shrine in all of Japan (at least that is what I was told) and to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. I took a couple of pictures. There were chickens running around all over the place and there were a couple HUGE trees that had little fences around them and then an evil-spirit warder wrapped around their trunks. This is where the foul hung out. You must see this temple. The Tories are gigantic and the park is immense. They had also recently (as in yesterday) finished another temple. I think, if I remember correctly, that they tear down and rebuild these things every 20 years or so. It was an impressive design. There was no way that we saw all of it in such a short amount of time. There was one, small, isolated red temple. That was curious.
After that we quickly stopped at a Jusco to grab a bite to eat (KaitenZushi) yum. Adam wasn't feeling well though. Then we walked back to the dorms and eventually settled down to play a raucous of a game known only as Zoo. It starts of with everyone clapping their hands in the "We will rock you" way, right? and then, instead of those lyrics, you say "Hey you, let's play zoo"...and the rest is where you are going to have to find a big group and me and play. It was a lot of fun. Thank You Kevin for the inspiration. 1.5 is a good size for me.
As more of the peeps filtered out for the night Adam, Regina, Kevin & I settled down to watch Princess Mononoke. It was getting late and few other people showed up for a Tequilla party that I am guessing never happened. I had to go so I bade farewell and made it just in time to catch the last train home-whew! All's well that ends well Shakespeare wrote, and he was right.
I want to Pericura so bad...they are playing Honey Flash continuously next door...I slept 8 hours today.
Los fotos consistan en: 1)El Tempulo Nuevo 2) Un Galleno sin cabeza (camera trick) 3) Un tonto nombre de una tienda de pelo con errores gramaticas... y 4) Yo con mi gato Miruku (Milk) Me aconpanaba durante mis estudios con su carino...

名古屋城

昨日名古屋城へ行った！すごくすてきな所だと思う。　そして刀があるよ！南山大学のフィルドトリプだったから日本学生と留学生は一生に行った。友達サヤコさんとサヤミさん話したりした。スパイン語がわかるのでスパイン語でたいてい話した。楽しかったと思う。写真は見て下さい！This is Nagoya Castle!!! This is the first castle that I have ever seen in Japan! It was magnificent! I learned a lot about what life was for the royally rich back in the day and i'm guessing that it pretty much rocked. There were several floors to climb, many a sword to see, and several exhibits to gaze upon. The thing that Nagoya-jo prides itself on are these two gold-plated whales placed on the top of the building on opposing sides of the tip of the roof. They are immense. From the top you can see all of Nagoya (which is pretty smoggy by the way) and the rest of the castle grounds. The kindof cool thing about the construction of the castle was that the many different clans that helped out moving hte foundation stones all marked the stones with their family crest and these crests can still be seen today. Mind you the actual structure was completely annihilated during the air raids of the second world war, the rebuilt structure is still the heart of the city and an amazing site to see.
Afterwards I mainly came back to my home in 一宮 and did some homework. I did that until about 10 when I went online for a bit. Mom/Dad/everyone, you are never online anymore!! I try to text to no avail. But really, excluding some rare excursions to the computer cluster on-campus, I am hardly online anyway except for late at night (USA read: early morning). There are a couple more things that I needed to report on that concern Japan's abnormalities or eccentricities. The first concerns riding a bike: When riding a bike note how the Japanese ride their bike, they constantly swerve to and fro which leaves the want-to-pass-you foreigner (read:this guy) also swerving to and fro...jockeying for position like a nascar racer around a horse-drawn carriage. Absurd. Second, concerning buses: Some buses, like those bound for a certain Myouken-cho 妙見町, come at an outrageously frequent interval; whereas other buses bound for other, more popular and certainly more important areas of town come once in a steely-teal moon (which is rarer than blue moon mind you).
Una etstrellita del mar se callo aqui en mi corazon. La doy mi amor, pero まだ miedo tengo.
Tengo fotos! Disfutan!

土羅梧 風郎令須

Well today had a few people's tempers flaring. I don't know exactly why it effected so many people but there must have been something in the air today. Brit was flaming because the classes that she has are kindof a joke. One moves to slow and the other is very unstructured and she just can't seem to handle it. Karen is doing fine as long as she stays away from her host family which, if it wasn't before, is starting to sound pretty strange. Everyone pretty much agrees that if we go home to out host families we basically twiddle our thumbs with boredom. Personally I find that time useful in learning more kanji but that is just me. Thought there are days when I have less homework, I find ways to keep myself busy. Perhaps everyone is just getting a little homesick. I thought too that I should try to explain some of the pictures from the last post. There one with the chain is taken from a small park adjacent to the nearest temple to my house in 一宮. The one with the fish on the plate is my dinner from the other day (yeah basically a whole fish with nothing but chopsticks--btw if I wasn't good with chopsticks I definitely am now). The one that is pinkish and a skyline is taken at dusk from 南山大学 basically looking over the city. The one with the sidewalk lady was taken near my home here on my commute back home. Until next time, じゃ　ね

A little more on the side please

With a few more days under the belt you'd think that I'd be running out of new stuff to tell you all about. Nope. Fat chansu. It turns out that every once and a while you will run into a lady wearing a kimono. Truth. Today I way three. One on the subway (of all places) and then two that emerged from what looked like a very nice hotel. I bowed to one of them and she smiled and bowed back! けっこいいね。Buses here come basically once an hour (unless you are going to Myoken-cho cuz then they're like every 15 seconds). There are yellow tiles on the sidewalks all around Nagoya that I had taken to be like decoration for the longest time but nay, they are actually guiding tools for the blind. I guess the city of Nagoya is just so nice -- or the people are so cold --- that they put those tiles there to help the less fortunate. The style of dress here, while we're talking about Kimonos 着物 is very fashion conscious but stuck, as a certain Phil pointed out, in the 80s (for the most part). We decided that, and this actually applies to multiple categories of style and purpose, that they Japanese just loved the 80s so much that they are having real trouble letting go of it. For example the girls and guys are always seen with very tall, poofy hair that goes in many a direction; the girls wear high boots with short skirts and the guys wear skimpy, multicolored vests that are a couple sizes too big with pointy elf shoes; computer machinery and many of the buildings of Nagoya and Nanzan are still stuck in the 80s with very few real modern pieces of equipment--hell, they're still have the option of not only using a tape recorder in the listening space, but (get this) a floppy disk for their e-mail service. Floppys get like a third of a magabyte of storage! It's really a turned around society in that respect: some aspects of life are really modern (cell phones), many are stuck in the 80s (vests??), and then there are other aspects of life that still live on from ancient times (Kimono on the subway), all in all they make up this society of people who see themselves as a special, unique culture that is moving and changing like the current in the ocean but who's culture and background remains in a constant ebb and flow with the oncoming future like the tide on the shore. I'm just floating on the surface it seems...
still loving the starfish...

月

I am very tired right now....very tired. I just returned from a night out on the town with all of my friends (well not all of them but the ones that were there were so much fun). Club ID is the place to go for foreigners and some Japanese tourists and the music was pretty good too. There was some wonderful dancing going on last night. Unfortunately the night had to end at 1 when they closed so we all headed out. Dylan made and lost a friend (and his dinner) in a matter of minutes, we went to Dennys (wtf mate) to grab a munchie, and then we headed over to a hotel to crash for the night. That hotel...a Japanese double with Americans t triple capacity. Fun.
I have really enjoyed this week and I am really looking forward to next week (a trip to Nagoya Castle is in sight I believe) with all of its sights and sounds. I realized, perhaps again today, that the Japanese people hardly drink any water at all. While I am busy schlurpin down my third glass they are usually about a quarter sip from being halfway through their first glass. They are a very hard working people but there is also a lot of free time for other activities of their choice. On Friday school started for all the locals. That meant that there was a sudden influx of Japanese culture and language that I had not seen before. All the guys and girls were all dressed up for the occasion in their best outfits which ranged from shorts & T, to designer jeans/boots/shirt/hat/and hairstyle, to an unreal pink & white frilly dress w/parasol. There was everything. I can't wait to see Starfish again. I bought a funny hat. By the way it's still hot.

日

It is the start of a brand new day! The sun has finally returned to Nagoya and the weather has never been better. Yesterday was a great day--despite feeling pretty drowsy the entire day--and today will be better i think (気分が悪くないんです）。 Everyday I forget about some things that I wanted to say about the quirkyness of Japan, for one, all of the 小学生 students wear yellow hats during their morning/afternoon commutes. I suppose it`s so others can see them better. To me it`s just funny looking! My commute is so frickin long. 2.5 hours of my life are gone to that effort. I think I might plan it so that I have to stay overnight at school a couple nights of the week just so that I can actually do something with those hours instead. Went to a little pastry shop last night with Starfish, just to grab a bite. The real good times were the walk that we took though. I`m looking forward to Wednesday. レヒナさんのお宅で映画を二つ見に行きます。It should be fun. I hope that I can just lay around outside and feel the sun. Nena, that is YOUR influence!

新橋

On the up and up! It is Sunday today in Japan and true to the face of this entire week it is raining today. Woot. Talk about another crazy weekend with crazy weekend stories. Boring stuff first: Showering at night (I might have said this before) not in the morning is the norm, Japanese people like their layers of clothing despite the heat (i think this is due to the humidity; the outer layer stays dry and looks nice no matter what), Subways and trains stop at midnight and the only mode of transpo at that time become the pricey taxi, 栄　is the center of the night of life, and you HAVE to remember where you parked your bike!
So Saturday, I left about 1pm to head out to the Zoo with 下. It turned out to be a great experience really. There were so many animals that I had never really seen so up close and they were all super-active. A lonely Rhinoceros, a few cats that I had never seen before, a couple of elephants taking a bath, kangaroos, a couple variations of penguins...really it was amazing. There was even a molting camel and a man with a very large hose...cleaning the cages. A certain someone lost all restraint at the zoo and basically lead our group through the entire place in record time. She really likes zoos! I don't know what I was watching more.
Our group then headed out to 名古屋,　not 栄, where we grabbed something to eat. RAMEN!! It got all over me, that カラーラメン。I was looking everywhere for a bank at this point too because I had run my initial wallet funds to the ground (there was still some I had at home but for all practical purposes I had no money at that point). Citibank is where I was able to get some cash. Ask any Japanese person for directions and they don't know the place they'll still tell you to go a couple of blocks in some random direction and then to turn right and look for the コンビニ or 7-11 shop and the place you are looking for is right around there....they always say that. Red Bull in 栄　last night--fo free! We found a Red Bull truck that was handing them out. Woot again. There are so many high-end shopping centers in 栄 it's nuts! We stopped in a Coach shop to ask for directions (this was actually helpful info).
To end the night we went to JoyJoy for some Karaoke fun. I really didn't want to go though, I really wasn't in the mood and something was irking me the wrong way. It didn't really get better as the night progressed into the music. Others drank too much, cigarettes belched their smoke with such a pompous air that that room...me, three guys, and a starfish getting too close to the shore. The waves crashed her hard on the sand last night and I could only do so much to show her back to sea. The tide is low again now but my mind is set; I cannot let that happen again. To the rhythm of my own heart she told me today that she too was far too close to shore and sorry to have made me worry the way I did. I would like a quiet afternoon.
The trains stop running at midnight by the way. It would be best if you returned to your home station before then. Take it from me.
So I'm pretty much finished with my homework for tomorrow and it's almost 5. I might go for a jog.